


Tomatoes to Make Wooing Sauce

by quietlyintoemptyspaces



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Cooking, Crack, Gen, Jealousy, M/M, Ulterior Motives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-15
Updated: 2013-05-15
Packaged: 2017-12-12 00:11:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/804869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietlyintoemptyspaces/pseuds/quietlyintoemptyspaces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John cooks; Sherlock suspects villainy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tomatoes to Make Wooing Sauce

**Author's Note:**

> Originally, it was just supposed to be a bit of domestic fluff that showed off some of the friendship between the tenants of 221B Baker Street. And then Mycroft showed up with his invisible ninjas and took over.

John reached into the fridge for the milk and then looked again. He blinked. He closed the door and reopened it. No head. No fingers. No miscellaneous severed body parts or beakers filled with questionable substances. Glancing around the corner he saw Sherlock on the sofa, one arm thrown over his eyes, the other across his stomach. For all intents and purposes, Sherlock Holmes appeared to be sleeping.  
Looking back to the fridge, he frowned. It was considerably sparse for two grown men, what with a quart of milk, a bag of tomatoes, and cheese that looked to have met with one of Sherlock’s experimental moments before being stuffed in the back of the crisper. The tomatoes worried John the most.

John certainly hadn’t bought them. Neither of them cooked much, and the only thing Sherlock went to get were things for his experiments that he couldn’t get online. He doubted tomatoes would be one of those things but…

Well, it was Sherlock Holmes.

“Poor dear,” Mrs. Hudson said suddenly, startling John. He hadn’t even heard her come up the stairs. “He’s been like that all night. I don’t think he’s moved one bit.” She set a few bananas on a clear spot on the counter, next to some flasks that looked the least dangerous. “Be a dear, would you John? That woman connected to her phone dropped those off this morning and I have no idea what to do with them. I thought they might be for something he was working on but somehow I doubt he’d have his brother get them for him when he could just ask you.”

As she turned and started walking back down the stairs, she threw over her shoulder, “And those bananas are for when he wakes up. He needs something other than tea and biscuits.”

John blinked. “Thank you Mrs. Hudson,” he called after her.

Tomatoes. From Mycroft. And bananas.

Well, there was only one thing to do.

John pulled the throw from the back of his chair and let it settle over Sherlock’s slumbering form; and then John set to work.

-

“I didn’t know you could cook.”

John was careful not to let the blanched tomato slip from his fingers. Half of them were peeled and while it had been a long time since he’d last done this, he wasn’t about to slip up just because Sherlock Holmes moved like Death himself. As it was, he stood behind John, watching over his shoulder as he dropped the peeled tomato into the pot with the others and moved onto the next one. In the pot beside that one was boiling water and glass bottles. Sherlock frowned at them and refrained from asking a stupidly obvious question.

“You’re canning tomatoes.”

“Yes,” John answered, even though it wasn’t a question so much as an observation.

John felt Sherlock tense behind him and saw the look on his face without turning. No doubt his eyes were narrowed and his head was turned just a bit to the side as though he was trying to figure out some great mystery.

“Why?”

John laughed. “They’re just tomatoes Sherlock. Eat a banana. Mrs. Hudson brought them up for you.”

“I don’t want one. Where did you get them?”

John stopped, cocked and eyebrow at his frowning friend. “Mrs. Hudson,” he said slowly. “Brought them up.”

“The tomatoes, John. The tomatoes! Where did you get them?”

“I believe you’re brother sent them over.”

Sherlock audibly gasped. “Mycroft? Did you test them for poison? No, no, he wouldn’t do that. But tomatoes? Why tomatoes? It doesn’t make sense. I don’t…” Sherlock stopped at the end of the table. “John! You obviously have experience with this… process.”

John grinned at him. “My family used to do it every year. We made jellies and jams and preserved our fruits and vegetables. I’m surprised I didn’t forget how to do it.”

“Yes, yes, very… Oh!” Sherlock slammed a palm against the table and the sharp sound of it made John flinch. “So, the tomatoes were meant for you. Which means, John… Oh. John… I do believe my brother intends to be courting you.”

John let out a laugh, a loud crackling sound that made Sherlock take a step back and give him a wary look. “They’re tomatoes, Sherlock.”

“Yes, well…” Sherlock fidgeted nervously before crossing behind John and settling back on the sofa. “Perhaps he starts small. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

-

A week later Sherlock still hadn’t eaten the bananas and they were starting to brown and bruise in spots. Another morning with next to nothing in the fridge. Although, he was almost happy to see, the cheese had grown into something that looked almost friendly. It worried John sometimes, living with a man who could quite possibly be a mad scientist.

He turned to see flour, molasses and cinnamon on the table.

He looked back at the bananas.

Thirty minutes later he hit Sherlock in the face with the whisk for sneaking up on him again. “Bananas, cinnamon, where did you get the flour?” John’s silence answered for him. “Wooing, John. He’s trying to get you on your back.”

John closed the oven and frowned. “For that imagery, you don’t get any banana bread.”

Sherlock’s eyes widened. “No, John. You took it in the literal sense. He’s only using you to get to me. John!”

-

Another two days and Mycroft was in the flat, sitting at the dining room table, happily chatting with John over tea and banana bread.

Sherlock sulked and refused to come out of his room.

-

Two months later Sherlock found John in the kitchen humming. There was a pineapple in his hands and another on the table, and two boiling pots on the stove.

Sherlock frowned and grabbed his phone.

You’re going to get fat. SH

There, that should teach Mycroft.

-

Mycroft, in fact, was not gaining weight. Sherlock told him the diet was a failure anyway and waited for the straightened shoulders and the denial but instead Mycroft only took John’s hand in a polite grasp and said, “You’re cooking is delightful as always, John.”

And then, before he left, “Until next week, Sherlock.”

-

“Next week” Sherlock decided, Mycroft wasn’t going to get the upper hand. Sherlock would stand next to John and protect him from the vileness that was his brother. Whatever evil plans Mycroft held for John would not come to fruition.

“Next week” however, he hadn’t planned on John making spaghetti. It was possibly the best thing he’d tasted that came from their kitchen, and was, in fact, the only thing other than tea that he’d tasted from their kitchen that wasn’t meant to poison or maim.

At the end of the night, already expecting the hand from Mycroft, Sherlock wrapped his arms around John’s chest and pulled him back.

“He’s mine, Mycroft. Get your own.”

Mycroft merely blinked at him and said, “I assure you, Sherlock, that I have no idea what you mean.”

John rolled his eyes. Sherlock couldn’t see it, but it seemed like the thing John would do right about then. “He thinks you’re wooing me.”

“I can assure you Sherlock, were I wooing John, you would know.”

Just before he exited 221, Mycroft heard, “There, are you happy? Put me down, I’m not you’re damn teddy bear!”

And then, “Only if I can have seconds.”

-

“Any changes?” Mycroft asked his personal assistant.

“Hm?” she said, barely glancing up from her phone. “Changes, sir?”

“On the occupants of 221B Baker Street. Sherlock Holmes and one Doctor John Watson.”

“No, sir. They’re the same as they were before.”

Mycroft frowned. “I thought for sure with the way Sherlock was acting…”

Anthea shrugged. “He’s eating,” she said, looking up at the black and white screen.

“Hm, yes. At least it’s something. Next time put more aphrodisiac in the tomatoes.”

“Of course, sir.”


End file.
